How To Make Your Own Crochet Bathing Suit

Hey everyone! So in spirit of summer time I wanted to crochet a bathing suit. I've been seeing lots of really pretty ones on pintrest and decided to make one for myself. Through a google search I found that lot's of them (sold by different stores) were more or less the same pattern. Here is what mine turned out to look like.  [Sorry for the bad picture quality but I had to take them myself with my phone]

 

I got the inspiration from this bathing suit here. Just in case the link breaks it's from chynnadolls and here are the pictures. The website has lots of cool bathing suits that [i think] are pretty easy to copy. 

 

So here is how to do it:

There are 3 parts, the bottom, the top, and the middle. I started off with the bottom and worked up. 

What you need:

-2 skeins of size 10 crochet thread

-Size 7 steel crochet hook 

For the bottome I used this diagram. This is meant for larger threads so I increased by 4 (dc 3 into first and last st) on every row. The back of the bottom piece came out very thin, I personally like it that way but for the more modest I reccomend experiments with adding more dc's (maybe increase 6 one row and 4 the next?)

So that it fit me I took a bathing suit I use all the time and kept comparing it to that as well as trying it on occasionally. The tops you have to make straight (only dc, not increase) so that you can connect them on the side. In the picture from which I copied the pattern this was bigger on the back but mine ended up being the same. Again, this all depends on your size and what angles you want to use. 

It came out like this. You can see from where there are threads that I started in the middle, went up one way to finish that side, picked up the stitched on the bottom and started working up again. 

To attached the sides I used a dc, ch1 type thing. I'm sure there is a name fore it but I drew it on the picture just in case. I just picked up the stitches on the side one the back side (thats where I was) 

To attach it I used a flat seam that I learned from here. I did a chain 1 in the middle of the joins so that it would pair up with the dc's. It looked like this. The side shown is the 'back' side. Make sure that both sides are the same. 

I added 2 rows of the same dc ch dc ch to the top of the bottom piece 

For the ruffled look on the back I just weaved a piece of thread down the middle, pulled it and tied it. I only went about 3 in. though, not sure if I like it so I might take it out. 

For the fun part here is how I did it. 

All of  what would normally be dc are tdc (triple double crochet)

EDIT: I've added some more info

I didn't do all of it but put in the important stuff. In case you've never done a pineapple motif before what you do if 11 tdc into the space shown above, then 11 tdc with a chain between each one, then you sc into the first one ch5 sc into next ch5 and so on. Look up a normal chart to see what I'm talking about. 

So looking at the pattern I had no idea how to start it because when working with the pineapple motif the side parts have to align to a previous row that has those bumps. So what I did was just to make the loopy things separate, like this:

They are all ch6 with a sc in every other dc. 

 Notice that I found the middle and left 3 dc with nothing on them. Later the middle of these three will have the tdc clusters in it. 

Here is me starting the 'second' row 

I planned it out starting from the left. Skip one dc, put cluster in next, skip dc, put first tdc in next.

The tdc are a space and a  half away from each other so that one is in the dc and the next is in the space. I made 7. You chain up 4 and right 2 when starting a row, so ch 6. 

Work until finished. I kept putting it on to see how much I had left to go since the top part is the same you can go as long as you need to. 

For the cups I used this pattern. Instead of ch2 at the top I only did one ch so that the space was smaller. I'm sure its pretty obvious that I only did the cup part and not the part to the right. Make the chain approximately the same size as from the bottom of your boob to the middle nipple area.

This makes an actual cup-like top. If you are more flat chested than I am you might want to just make a triangle, pretty simple I'm sure there are lots of examples online. Here is what they look like 

 

To joing the cups to the piece I kind of just made it up. I aligned them then did a sc and ch combo on the wrong side. It looks like this but feel free to come up with your own way to connect it. I was pretty fed up at this point and just wanted to finish it. 

For the straps I found this thing called the Romanian lace cord, looked up a video on youtube and connected

it. 

I would be glad to answer any questions through the comment section. Hope this is useful for someone!

~Fifi